Small Choices Can Make Big Differences in World Development

Jon Weller contends that a cup of coffee a day can help save the world.

For Weller, who teaches a class called “How to Change the World,” the simple act of choosing to purchase fair trade coffee starts a ripple effect with the potential of life-changing consequences. 

Fair trade coffee is produced by workers who are paid fair wages and given basic worker rights.

“Fair trade coffee is a fairly easy commitment to make,” said Weller, director of international admissions at the University of Cincinnati. “Changing the world is going to come from a large number of people making different, but simple, financial choices and the market will respond.”

Through his popular organizational leadership course, Weller imparts practical wisdom as well as opportunities for students to learn about extreme global poverty and what they can do about it. 

Weller’s experience with study abroad and working with international admissions fuels his passion for inspiring global engagement. At UC International, he travels the world to recruit high school students to attend UC. However, he hasn’t always had the opportunity to interact with students once they come to campus.

That’s why the 16-year UC veteran developed How to Change the World.

“I thought that it would be interesting to have a class that attracted globally minded students who might not even have a particular knowledge or expertise on particular issues, but who were interested in the world,” he said. 

Throughout the semester-long course, students watch videos, volunteer at nonprofit organizations and listen to various guest speakers from both on and off-campus. 

“It’s an introductory course and in a lot of ways I’m more of a facilitator than a professor,” he said. 

The class is now a required course for organizational leadership majors, though it is open to students in all majors. Topics include everything from HIV and AIDS in Kenya to building schools in Africa to sex trafficking in India to and supporting orphanages in Vietnam. Each topic offers a specific global perspective often missing from traditional core academic requirements. “We talk about some very depressing things, but we try to end every class on an inspirational note,” he said.

Since he first started teaching the course, Weller has seen first-hand the difference it can make in students’ lives. Former student Sarah Whitestone, for example, transformed from student into guest speaker. She enrolled in the class when she was an undergraduate confined to a wheelchair. 

Whitestone went on to become a powerful advocate for wheelchair accessibility on the Uptown campus and founded a student organization to provide ongoing support for others with similar challenges. She continued that activist work even after starting a new kind of therapy that enabled her not only to walk again, but to run. 

“She and I stayed in contact for several years,” Weller said. “I asked her to come talk in class about her organization.”

Class alumni have gone on to join the Peace Corps, changed majors and even extended their academic studies because of their local and even global experiences with Weller.

Weller also teaches a related study-abroad course, which features a 10-day trip to Peru, in the spring. “It’s the same idea as the How to Change the World class, and it introduces students to a wide range of issues but gives them the opportunity to see those realities first-hand,” he said. 

The study program, then, adds another dimension to the learning experience. The students spend an entire day visiting with fair-trade artisans, many of which make items that the students learn about in class

“It’s really rewarding to see how it impacts students,” he said. 

It’s not too late to sign up for Weller’s study abroad class this spring: OLHR 2011-101 Changemakers: Lessons Learned through Travel in the Developing World and OLHR2010 – 001 will be offered again this spring.